Ethereum's success brought smart contracts in focus

The Ethereum platform has generated much furore of late particularly after the crowdfunding of The DAO - or the Decentralized Autonomous Organization - and the subsequent spike in the price of the currency of the platform, Ether, from less than a dollar to $15 in six months.

A sane level of clarity has also been achieved on the differences between Ethereum and the Bitcoin platform. This understanding, though still sinking, has enabled the two leading cryptocurrency platforms in the world to maintain their operating focus in specialized areas of interest. It also provided enthusiasts a clear view to make the best investment choices.  

Ethereum has been appreciated more for the popularity it has brought to smart contracts whose programming it's made a basic tenet of Blockchain's power.

Future Ethereum's milestones

However, despite the rave, the comparison with Bitcoin and the great expectation of the optimistic ETH ecosystem, the Ethereum projects' currently expected future milestones are still set for between 2017 and 2018, according to Vitalik Buterin, a co-founder of Ethereum, in  his paper 'Opportunities and Challenges for Private and Consortium Blockchains released by the R3 Consortium.'

Metropolis: release of the Mist browser, expected summer/fall 2016

Serenity ('Ethereum 1.5'): release of the proof of stake (Casper) version of the Blockchain, also including Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) 101 and 105. Expected early 2017.

WebAssembly release ('Ethereum 1.75'): faster virtual machine. Expected 2017.

Ethereum 2.0 (yet unnamed): initial scalability release. Expected late 2017.

Ethereum 3.0 (yet unnamed): 'unlimited' scalability release. Expected late 2018.

If these milestones are anything to go by, then nothing has yet happened in the ETH ecosystem.